Hazard SEES: An Integrated Approach to Risk Assessment and Management in Responding to Land Falling Hurricanes in a Changing Climate

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Hurricanes, through their strong winds, heavy rainfall, and storm surges, cause much damage and loss of life worldwide. Recent disasters (e.g., Typhoon Haiyan in 2013; Hurricanes Sandy in 2012, Irene in 2011 and Katrina in 2005) underscore the significant vulnerability of the U.S. and the world to land-falling hurricanes. The impacts of these storms may worsen in coming decades because of rapid coastal development coupled with possibly increasing hurricane activity and sea level rise. This project is developing a new framework for assessing and managing hurricane risk based on fundamental physics. The framework will be applicable to all hurricane-afflicted coastal areas. We are carrying out case studies for the coastal areas in New York, New Jersey, North Carolina and Florida to assess and compare hurricane hazards in these areas, estimate how these hazards may evolve in the future, and develop engineering and policy strategies for coping with these hazards. This research involves several disciplines, including geosciences, engineering and architecture, and social, behavioral and economic sciences, and is helping to prepare next-generation of specialists in the fields of natural hazards. The results from this research will support the rebuilding and increased resiliency of coastal areas in the U.S. and around the world. Physics-based hurricane risk assessment is challenging, due to multi-scale features of the phenomena. This research is advancing hurricane and climate science, with the objective of fundamentally enhancing hurricane risk analysis. We are developing two independent hurricane climatology models to investigate how hurricane frequency, intensity, and size will evolve in a changing climate. We are applying observational analysis and numerical modeling to study hurricane wind, surge, and rainfall hazards, including their spatial and temporal structures, their interaction, and effects of the coast, land, extratropical transition, and changing climate. We are developing physics-based, observationally-evaluated, and computationally-efficient hazard models to assess joint hazard probabilities under various climate scenarios; we are also creating a multi-hazard model of wind and water vulnerability describing the compound impacts of hurricane hazards. Combining the improved estimation of the joint hazards and vulnerability, risk assessment can then be carried out to support advanced risk management from various perspectives. The risk management component of this project is focusing on the policies of the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program and engineering designs for coastal flood mitigation. These instruments are critical in mitigating hurricane risk and increasing coastal resiliency, and this project will develop them in the new context of changing climate.